


A Bouquet of RPF AUs

by Hawkbringer



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal (TV) RPF
Genre: Aftercare, Arguing, Behind the Scenes, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dom/sub Undertones, Inner Dialogue, Insomnia, Kissing, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Morning After, Multiple Personalities, Multiplicity/Plurality, No Sex, Old Married Couple, Rough Draft, Underwear Theft, Undressing, Vignette, author's notes left in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:15:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23616616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkbringer/pseuds/Hawkbringer
Summary: Musings on a theme. A handful of slightly different RPF AUs, inspired by the episode commentaries and the actor's interviews and other fics in the fandom. Including accidental sub-drop, undressing and underwear theft, arguments over eggs, and a complicated four-person discussion about how to get one insomniac actor to sleep. (originally written 31st July 2015)
Relationships: Hugh Dancy/Mads Mikkelsen, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	A Bouquet of RPF AUs

**Author's Note:**

> origin: 31st july 2015, or earlier.
> 
> All right, well. If we do an RPF fic, it would /have/ to be because of Mads and Hugh playing Hannibal and Will, not because Bryan discovered Tumblr and wants to film a hidden DVD extra. That is /way/ too contrived. (UPDATE, DURING THE BLOODY-KNUCKLES HAND-WORSHIP SCENE IN SEASON 2, BRYAN ADMITS IN THE COMMENTARY THAT HE LITERALLY THROWS SHIT LIKE THIS INTO THE EPISODES TO BAIT THE HANNIGRAM SHIPPERS. IS ENTIRELY PLAUSIBLE THAT SOME SHIT LIKE THAT CONTRIVED BULLSHIT WOULD HAPPEN. ARGH.) 
> 
> Okay, best way to make it seem not totally deus ex machina, bryan ex machina, is to be focusing on the thoughts and feelings of both or either actor as they get into place for such a shot. Character-focused, see? Like the show. Perhaps echoing it with some brazenly fatalistic, whole-hearted-suicide-jump-type mental gymnastics. That would be hella cool. Like, still in character. Of /course/ they'd have to be in character. That's kind of a given, even if they break it later. The pair of them would need the veneer to at least get started. 
> 
> I really like the thing one actual actor said about this possibility, that as an actor, sometimes they will look for the qualities of the character in their co-stars, and it is hella jarring to not find it. So Mads and Hugh would keep pretending, off-set, keep acting, to keep either of them from experiencing a kind of sub-drop.

Mads would keep acting to support the suddenly-frighteningly-fragile Hugh as he got disoriented coming out of a really intense scene, like he doesn't know where he is, and Mads throws an arm over his shoulder because Hugh is acting /strangely/, looking at the crew like he doesn't recognize them, eyes only lighting up upon seeing cast members. Mads identifies the sub-drop symptoms pretty quickly and waves off Costuming (not Wardrobe, as the head so prissily insists), assuring them he'll bring the suits back. 

He drops Will off at Hugh's trailer, nervously bouncing briefly before opening the door for him and going so far as to help him partially undress and fit him under the covers. He adopts Hannibal's seemingly-innocent wheedling tone to suggest that Dancy hand him all of his clothes, since most of them need to go back to Costuming. He debates for perhaps too long whether or not to bring the wadded up pair of grey briefs to Costuming as well. He's not sure if that's where they go, or... He brings them, wadded up in his pocket, and they do not ask for them. Mads insists he got Will, er, Hugh, to change in his trailer, when he is, in fact, sleeping nude.

Mads feels terribly responsible, and resolves to go check on him after handing over his ridiculous, beautiful suit. He has to hurriedly ask for more privacy than normal to switch Hugh's day-old undies - Damn, he wasn't thinking straight, was he? Why would Costuming want /those/? - into the pocket of his civvies. It bulged outlandishly on the side of his track pants and he made the split-second executive decision to stuff them down the front of his boxers to better disguise them. Grinning to himself at the augmented profile his bulge thereafter made, Mads attempted valiantly to shove down any disgust at his actions until he was back in Hugh's presence and had carried him up from sub-drop. 

He scampers back to Hugh's trailer and digs Hugh's underwear out of his own, lightly tossing the wadded up cloth into a pile of similar-looking clothes-like-things. He intently refuses to look too closely at any of his surroundings. Just the basics: Door. Lock. Bed. Hugh. 

With his hands on Hugh's cheeks, Mads wakes him slowly from his fitful nap, stroking his skin and wondering if he should kiss Hugh's forehead. He decides for it when Hugh whimpers as his voice gathers strength. "I am here, Will," he murmurs, pressing their noses together, sitting side-saddle on Hugh's narrow bed. "You are safe with me. I will protect you. It is only a nightmare, it is not real. Come back to me, Will. Let me see you. Let me see your beautiful eyes. Come. Won't you open them for me?" 

Between the face-stroking and the soft words, Dancy does come up from unconsciousness, but regrettably, only long enough to focus on Mads' face, mutter, "Oh, Hannibal. It's you," then immediately drop off into a more restful-looking sleep that involved slack jaws and snoring. 

Mads has to chuckle at him. After prodding his facade for cracks, Mads decides Hugh was either very, /very/ good, or truly sleeping. Either way, if the experience has so exhausted him that he really did fall asleep that quickly, someone should really stay with Hugh and ascertain that he would wake up safely in the morning. If the man was faking it, continuing to act, for the sake of making Mads the butt of some joke later on, then he was practically honor-bound to one-up the little shit, and the best way he could think of to do so was taking him seriously. 

Whatever his rationalizations, Mads toes off his shoes as he sits on Will Graham's bed, tugs the covers gently out of Dancy's slackened hands, and covers himself in them, nudging the other man closer to the wall with his own body. Mads chooses gladly to be the buffer between this exhausted, delicate, Dancy, and the demands of the outside world. 

Not used to the sounds of Hugh's trailer creaking at night, Mads sleeps lightly. Neither of them is either remotely rested enough when, at the ass-crack of dawn, they are called onto set again. The knock on Hugh's door is answered by Mads before he can think to wake up Hugh to do it, and the crewmember doesn't even pause upon hearing him. 

He supposes, as he stretches unusual kinks out of his back, as every morning, that gossip might have traveled faster than he'd give it credit for. If anyone saw him entering to check on Dancy, and no one saw him leaving, they'd make the obvious logical leap. Plus, the two of them were just such good friends that it hardly seemed out of character for either of them to do something like that, Mads convinces himself as he ruffles Hugh's sleep-wild hair and throws his corner of the blanket back over Dancy to let him sleep for a few more precious minutes. 

(AAAnd that starts the trend of Mads hovering near Hugh as they wrap for the day, though for the whole rest of the episode's shoot, none of their final scenes are as draining. AAAAnd after the episode wraps and they have a day to sleep and call their spouses, after discharging their many duties of their 'day off,' Mads and Hugh reconnect come sundown, and do a little acting of their own. Then sex. Obviously.)

(I could /so/ see Mads doing something like just adding a little kiss in at the end of some frustrating scene where Will is being obnoxious and inflexible and not taking to Hannibal's manipulation very well. And Dancy just turning his head towards it and accepting it, but without change in facial expression, still pouting. And then there's, like, /two/ beats, and then the crew starts laughing and Hugh's eyes bug out and he slaps a hand over his mouth and Mads breaks character and starts guffawing. That is the most adorable/gen way it would happen. Like, Dancy keeps /insisting/ it's platonic, and everyone else is like, 'they're so gay. Look at the gay. Bask in it.')

\----

Hannibal and Will are arguing over breakfast. 

Well, it's Hannibal and Will arguing through the mouthpieces of their actors, over breakfast.

The food itself is satisfactory, though Mads is insisting Hannibal would disagree. Hugh Dancy is talking about road trip food. 

Mads asks him how he would know anything about roadtrip food, being British, wherein roadtrips last approximately 20 minutes. Dancy insists he has had lots of practice since coming to the States. So of course the conversation turns to Hannibal and roadtrips.

"He didn't even need to take a roadtrip to get to the airport!" Dancy exclaims, making Mads mock-duck as he waves a plastic fork around. "All right, I suppose the train to Palermo could count..."

"And when have you been on said 'roadtrips,' Will Graham, hmm? Apart from driving several hours in a snowstorm to meet me outside of office hours that one time..." Mads takes a pointed, prissy bite of eggs benedict and Dancy sticks out his tongue at him. Mads chews impassively although his eyes crinkle.

\-----  
(argh, too fluffy! Needs more desperation!)

"Nope. There's no way. Hannibal would /never/."

"I believe you are underestimating his possessive streak, dear boy."

"His or yours?"

"Where are the lines?" Mads deflects poetically, eyes fixed on Hugh. "When I see you, I /become/ him. On the inside. He /wakes/. Does not Will Graham awaken in you?"

Dancy's eyes slide sideways and he shakes his head. "It's not like that for me. Will is... He's not... /me/. I mean. He's defined by everyone else around him and that's why he starts out so /lost/, at the beginning..."

"Until he finds me," Mads finishes, insufferably confident.

"...Yes, until he finds you," Hugh allows reluctantly. 

\-------

(THIS ONE IS REALLY GOOD, it has all four of them in various levels of co-fronting like 'plural' people. We're mostly priivvy to Mads and Hannibal, because Will has taken over Hugh's brain completely and Hugh can do almost nothing /but/ talk.)

"Mads... Mads..." Hugh Dancy is shaking. He looks like he's seconds away from going into shock, his face so pasty-white and hair plastered to his head from either water or sweat. 

Mads Mikkelsen instinctively steps up into his personal space and places the back of his hand on Hugh's forehead.

"Hugh... Are you sick?"

Hugh brushes off his hand and hustles into Mads' hotel room, swaddled in at least one generic blanket from another room.

"I, ugh," is all he says. Mads steps into his personal space again, one steadying hand on his shoulderblade, the touch perhaps fully muffled by his many layers.

"Have you thrown up? Should I call someone?" Mads turns partially away from Hugh with one hand still outstretched, thinking to pick up his phone and dial the paramedics on staff.

"No! It's not that!" Hugh barks, voice not sounding any better for the change of scenery. He lashes out and grabs Mads' shoulder. The contact is enough to make the older man turn fully back towards him. 

He opens his arms slowly, questioningly, and does not stumble as Dancy falls halfway into him, shoulder thumping against his chest and sagging forward. 

His hands encircle the swaddled man's shoulders on instinct and he begins to rock soothingly on his feet as he would with his daughter were she fussing. 

"What is wrong, Hugh?" he whispers more quietly, shoving down the instinct to squirm as Hugh's hair tickles at his throat. 

Hugh drags lines into Mads' sleepwear. "Will can't sleep."

"And so neither can you." It isn't a question. Hugh glances up incredulously. The slide of his curly hair startles Mads and he looks accidentally taken aback when Hugh lays eyes on him, details obscured by the faintness of the single lit bedside lamp.

"Hannibal never keeps you up at night?" 

Mads's face adopts pieces of a bemused expression, most of it too tired to follow suit. "No. He sleeps like an angel. No guilt, obviously."

"Obviously," Hugh parrots, sounding very much like Will as he thumps his head back into Mads' chest with an eye-roll.

"Why did you come to /me/? How can I help Will sleep?" Mads asks, not commenting on how unhealthy it is to allow a character such control over one's psychology as to let them affect the actor's sleep schedule.

"He wants hmmhmmm..." Hugh mutters the last of the sentence into Mads' chest and it blurs into obscurity, probably by design. 

Mads rolls his eyes and frees one arm to pick Hugh's chin up and stare through his eyes to talk to the irritable child behind them.

"You know I can't understand you when you mumble, Will. Speak up now. What do you want from me?" Hannibal's speaking cadence is slower than Mads' own, most of the time, and the clipped, precise enunciation dulls his accent into something only unidentifiably European. 

Will blinks up at him from behind Hugh Dancy's absurdly puppy-like eyes and he does not respond. Mads lets his face harden.

"Will," Hannibal barks out sharply, but quietly, as befits the late hour, "it is much too late to play coy with me. Tell me why you're here."

Hugh Dancy closes his slowly-deadening eyes and breathes in deeply before answering. When he opens them, there are terrifyingly flat. Probably precisely as Will feels at the moment.

"I feel as if I am built on sand," Will bemoans, waxing poetic about his neuroses again. Mads and Hugh both know that Will feels this way, but Hannibal has not heard these words from the man himself.

"And you feel yourself slipping away?" Even when he is trying to be irritable, Hannibal can't resist the urge to bait. Mads nearly rolls his eyes internally at the manipulative honey-smooth words.

"Yes...Yes," Will gasps, or Hugh gasps, Mads can't tell. Hannibal does not slip away from him like this, ever. Hannibal has no reason to be irritated at /Mads/. His channeler has never been /rude/ to him, after all. But something is wrong with Will, something Hugh can't assague. 

Mads is not looking forward to later weeks when perhaps he will be a sleepless mess like Hugh is. Hannibal will not remain composed and calm for long, after all. They've some idea, even if the script isn't fully finished.

"You need me," Hannibal teases in a matter-of-fact tone. Hugh's curly-haired head drops back down against his chest, his folded-in arms tensing against Mads' chest, his fingers clawing into fabric, his face turned away.

"...Desperately," he adds, tilting his head to attempt to catch Will's eye. Hugh's shoulders tense further under the single arm Mads still has around him. 

Mads lets go, and drops to one knee in front of Hugh, disorienting the poor man momentarily. Will bliniks Hugh's eyes and turns his head side to side, as if searching, before Hannibal's voice makes him jerk his head down to see Mads.

"I will always be here, Will. I will not abandon you." As falsely as the words ring, since clearly, none of them can predict Hannibal's future, Will seems to take some comfort in it. 

Hugh's face twists, mollified, but still upset.

"Nnn... But why?" He isn't looking at Mads. /Playing coy again,/ Hannibal supplies to Mads with a sigh. 

/That's why you love him,/ Mads shoots back sardonically. 

/THAT is not why,/ Hannibal replies almost without sparing a moment to compose his reply. 

No more is forthcoming from the serial killer so Mads focuses outwards again and reaches up to take Will's wrists in his hands. 

He stands, as the kneeling is hard on his knees, and pivots both of them so that the meager bedside light fully illuminates Mads' face. Hannibal would want Will to /see/ how sincere he was being. Mads wants Hugh to know his complaint is being taken seriously.

"Will," he begins, inhaling audibly through his nose. "I love you," he says, almost as though there was to be a second part to the sentence, beginning with 'but'.

Dancy snorts. Not the reaction Hannibal was hoping for, and he blinks once in dismay. "I /know/ that, Doctor. It's written all over the show." Hannibal blinks again, the dissonance between realities jarring. 

"I cannot /help/ but love you," Hannibal continues earnestly, not letting go of Will's wrists. Mads face starts heating up in second-hand embarrassment. He has no idea what Hannibal is about to say to Will next. "I find it quite vexing, the strength of the effect you have on me." 

While he's baring his soul, Will is hiding his, head turned away and only nodding in bored acknowledgement. Hannibal squeezes at Will's wrists to get his attention. Mads moderates it to ensure Hugh is not harmed. 

His wild eyes fly upwards, so vulnerable, so red. He just needs to go to /sleep/, Mads shouts at Hannibal, unable to pinpoint the moment they had transitioned between driver and passenger. 

"What more do you need from me, Will? A talisman to guard your night terrors? I cannot snap my fingers and give you restful sleep." 

Hugh bites his lower lip. "You can, actually," he mutters, not muffling his chin in the blankets now. Mads understands him. 

"Tell me," the actor replies, a level of warmth seeping into his tone that Hannibal would not allow - not at /this/ stage in their relationship, at least. Mads tries not to think about what 'stages' Hannibal has in mind for Will as he slides his hands down into Dancy's, keeping their grip light and comforting, not demanding. Here and now is not the time for such musings. Hannibal will most definitely let him know when the time is right, after all.

Hugh's, or Will's, nerve fails him at the last second and his eyes skitter away. "May I sleep with you?" he mutters, quietly enough that Mads has to ask him to repeat it, not trusting Hannibal's widening, triumphant smirk in the back of his head.

"I wouldn't... Sleep badly... If I slept with you," Hugh admits haltingly. And there seem to be a million things further he wants to say, a million more qualifiers and backtracks and apologies he wants to spew, but Hannibal doesn't let him. Mads wouldn't either. 

He tugs Dancy by the grip he has on his hands to sit on the edge of the bed. Then he wraps the blanket-swaddled man in a bear hug, rolling him into bed with him and making the actor shout with laughter. 

They tumble for a moment, wriggle and claw to get most of Hugh's blankets off before their heads hit separate pillows with a respectful distance between them. 

Hugh puts out a hand and touches Mads' shoulder, murmurs, "Thank you," then pulls his hand back, shoving it under his pillow, and closes his eyes. 

The weak lamplight does not seem to impact his ability to fall asleep, so Mads leaves it on, allowing himself and the silent ghost of Hannibal in his mind both to look their fill.

\---

When they wake up the next morning, they go downstairs for breakfast together, IDK. And Mads tries to feed him some of his eggs and sausage and Dancy shrieks and refuses to eat it, subtly kisses Mads on the cheek when he gets up for seconds. Both of them are smiley for days. 

It's the next week when Hugh comes to him again, and Hannibal lets him in without comment, reaching up to help him shrug out of his sleep shirt that he claims he doesn't need. 

When his face is freed, Mads kisses him again, making no big deal of it, just a slight smile as he turns away and throws the shirt onto a nearby chair, tossing the covers back and holding out a hand for Hugh to go first. 

He's still standing there with a hand on his cheek, which makes Mads smile and tug him down to the bed with one hand on his forearm. 

They sleep on opposite sides from last time, and Dancy says in the morning he prefers to be closer to the door. Then he goes scarlet, insisting it won't happen again, of course. 

Mads just shakes his head, putting gentle fingers around one wrist. "Whatever you need," he insists quietly, his other hand patting Hugh's opposite shoulder in a more visible companionable gesture before they split apart.

**Author's Note:**

> OMG this is so cute - I am so proud of myself! :D


End file.
